Free At Last!

End of Summer, 2011

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been stupidly afraid of heights.  I say “stupidly” because it is beyond a level of ridiculousness.  Three steps up a ladder is frightening; four is almost impossible.  Looking over a balcony, even from just the second floor, literally causes a bodily sensation that I feel throughout my core and it feels as if it is pulling me over the rail.  And then there are stairs.  Yes, I feel the fear on stairs, especially as I near the top.  Invariably, I end up so tense, or whatever, as I near the top that I take the last couple of steps in one big step.  Oh, and often I kick the riser with my toe to make sure my foot is all the way on the step.  Don’t even think I’m going to look up and talk to someone who is coming down the stairs.  Do you have any idea how beyond ridiculous this is?  Picture it, I’m at DBU going up the main stairs in the busiest building on campus.  I’ve got a firm grip on the hand rail, there is a clunking sound at each step as I kick the riser, and a student from somewhere up above me says, “Hey Professor Dahl!”  I have to stop and block traffic to look to see who is talking to me!!  If I am lucky, they are at the next landing and I can quickly ascend the last few stairs (especially since I double step the last two) and talk to him on level ground.  Yes, that’s me.  Professor Dahl, teaching undergrad psych and licensed professional counselor.  Don’t even get me started talking about the dreaded stairs with open risers.  I cringe at just the thought.

Over the last few years, say 10 years, I’ve been actively working to overcome or at least reduce my fear of heights.  I was so proud to be able to climb five and six steps of a ladder to paint our backyard shed.  It wasn’t all that bad really.  There was good firm ground and a steady ladder.  I got to a point through sheer will of being able to do some things despite my fear.  I was able to stand on my bathroom counters and paint Bible verses as a border around my bathroom.  I was able to stand high enough on a ladder to paint the kids’ bedrooms.  I painted song lyrics in Lettia’s bathroom without too much of an issue except for when I had to put the ladder INSIDE the bathtub.  I lost my solid ground.  I was so scared that I was sweating like a pig!  Dripping sweat!  In fact, it was so bad that I didn’t want to come down from the ladder during the time that I needed to let paint dry before continuing on.  I thought staying up there would serve two purposes: 1) I wouldn’t have to get my nerve up again to climb the ladder and, 2) maybe exposure therapy (flooding, to be specific) would work for me.  Not.  I texted my dear Rachel to distract me while I sat atop the ladder waiting for paint to dry.  Her encouragement was, “well at least you’re dripping into the tub.”  Love you too, dear.

Anyway, I think you get the picture now how accurate I am when I say that I am “stupidly afraid of heights.”  I never could understand the why behind my fear.

I went to a workshop that was hosted by the counseling center where I work and, to this day, I am still amazed at how God works to heal.  The instructor was talking about tracing fears to their roots.  He went through a sample progression of questions and related it to a past counseling example.  At the end of it, he said one sentence: “In the end, we discovered that her fear was related to loss of control of her body.”  In that moment, truth was revealed.  Insight was gained.  Healing occurred.

My fear was rooted in a fear of losing control of my body.  It’s a root that went deep to my childhood of sexual abuse.  Too often, someone else had control of my body.  I had to walk out of the workshop because I was about to lose control of my emotions.  Sharon, my boss (and my friend), was in her office and I found her there.  She held me, consoled me, counseled me, and encouraged me.

In the days that followed, my fear of heights was greatly reduced.  I could look over a second floor balcony and not have that feeling in my body.  But, when I was climbing the stairs at DBU, I found myself quickly slipping into my habits.  I stopped and claimed God’s healing in this (I literally said out loud, “No, I’m healed of this fear!”), looked up the stairs, and walked with confidence.

No matter how many times I see God’s hand in my life, I am still utterly amazed.  God used a counseling workshop to bring revelation, He coordinated a comforting place for me (Sharon had also stepped out of the workshop), and He reminded me that I am healed.  I am free at last, thank God!

The Beauty of Scars

April 12, 2012

Driving to work this morning I was violating my own counseling words and was dwelling on things that aren’t true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, of excellence, or worthy of praise.  It was a  pity party, plain and simple.  At that moment, I was jolted back to reality by a song introduction on “The Message,” a satellite radio station.  It was a new song by Jonny Diaz called Scars.  Jonny Diaz also sings one of my favorite songs called The Beauty of the Cross.  It is a joy-filled song that brings me back to a favorite verse of mine, 1 Cor. 1:18: “For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  I wear a cross necklace every day to remind me of this.

You can watch the video of The Beauty of the Cross is here.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pze4kMuvcfk&feature=related

Watch the video of Scars here.  If there is a glitch with the video, the link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbqs4vCXiOc

She holds for dear life to the ends of sleeves in her hands

Covering up lies that she wrote with a razor sharp pen

And the sting of the blade is no match for the pain of the loneliness she’s going through

But we’ve all been there too

Praise God we don’t have to hide scars

They just strengthen our wounds and they soften our hearts

They remind us of where we have been

But not who we are

So praise God, Praise God we don’t have to hide scars

You can still see the mark on his hand

Where there once was a ring

He watched decades of history dissolve when she wanted to leave

And the hole that it left there inside of his chest is a canyon a thousand miles deep

We all know how that feels

Praise God we don’t have to hide scars

They just strengthen our wounds and they soften our hearts

They remind us of where we have been

But not who we are

So praise God, Praise God we don’t have to hide scars

There once was a King who so burdened with grief

Walked into death so that we could find peace

He rose up with scars on His hands and His feet

By them we are healed

By them we are healed

So praise God we don’t have to hide scars

Yeah we know His are covering ours

Praise God we don’t have to hide scars

They just strengthen our wounds and they soften our hearts

They remind us of where we have been

But not who we are

So praise God, praise God

Oh His scars are covering ours

So praise God

We don’t have to hide scars

This song hits me for a couple of different reasons.  First, I am a counselor and a large part of my job is to help people heal wounds.  But, more importantly, it reminded me how healing it has been for me to write this blog.  I first told of my childhood of sexual abuse on Jan. 5, 1985. I was so full of shame that I could only tell a few, very select people.  Once in a while, when the mood struck me, I would tell someone just for shock value.  I know that that is a little twisted and honestly kind of mean to tell someone something like that just for the fun of seeing the expression on their face.  But, hey, at the time, I had to find some way to get a laugh.  As the years have passed and healing progressed, I told more people.  Then I started working as a counselor and have shared it with clients who either guessed it of me or seemed like they would just not feel so incredibly lonely and hopeless if they knew just one person who had overcome.

Last summer I crossed what I think is my last big hurdle in healing: I told my kids.  I had been thinking of doing it for a while and I’ve always known that one day I would tell them.  I was talking about it more and more to other people and I knew that one day I wanted to write about it all.  But they needed to hear it from me.  I needed to have them hear it from me.   I was so incredibly scared.  I didn’t think they would judge me poorly for it.  I was terrified of their pity.  But all I have felt from them is love.  No different, no less than before.

So, telling my kids freed me to write.  I used to write some free-lance stuff a few years ago and I stopped because nothing else but this stirred me to write.  Over the last 9 months or so, I had written several posts for this blog but couldn’t post them.  And, even after telling my kids, it took another 6 or 7 months to muster the guts to do it.  So I finally sat down at my computer and set up the blog, posted the first one secretly, and ran it past two select people for their feedback/blessing.  Several days passed again until I decided to do it.  I wrote the first group email announcing it and then sat there in fear.  I couldn’t close the deal and send the email.  After about an hour, I reached out to Tim, my rock, my encourager, my love, who said, “Push the button.”  We talked for another hour, and with him sitting beside me cheering me on, I hit “send.”

Posting the blog showed my scars to everyone.  It was scary.  I felt naked.  However, it’s been incredibly rewarding to not hide them anymore.  The response I’ve gotten has been phenomenal and I don’t  feel like I’m hiding some secret.  Long ago I had come to the realization that I no longer wish the abuse hadn’t happened.  Maintaining those regrets only fuels bitterness.  But never, until this morning, as I listened to Scars, had I thought my scars are beautiful.  They are reminders of what I’ve been through, but they are not who I am.  The open wounds kept me away from people, but my scars allow me to draw near.  My wounds made me feel alone and worthless, but Jesus’s scars covered them with His love.  That is beautiful.

Thank you God for opening my eyes this morning!

A Video, A Book, A Heavenly Story

March 13, 2012

In 2009, I started teaching General Psychology at Dallas Baptist University (DBU).  I love, love, love teaching that particular class because of the variety of topics we get to learn and discuss.  I like to make my classes interesting by using a variety of teaching methods including using some videos.  When we learn about prodigies, I use a video that features Akiana Kramarik, an incredibly talented young artist.  If you want to see it, this is the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBNMtPlBD0Y.  Pay attention to the Prince of Peace painting.  It is Jesus as she saw him.  When I show this video in my classes, there are always gasps of amazement when they see the gift of this girl, especially when she attributes it to God.

Three weeks ago, a client asked if I had read a book titled, “Heaven is for Real.”  She had just read it and found it hugely comforting in the wake of her father’s death.  I hadn’t read it but it was a book that I wanted to read.  The next week (two weeks ago) she brought me a copy of the book to read and then to pass on.  She loves it so much she gives multiple copies away to people and simply told me to pass it on to someone else when I am done reading it.  It took me a week to get to it, and then I couldn’t put it down.  I read it in a day and a half which is incredibly unusual for me.  I talked so much about it that Tim downloaded it to his phone and read it.  He read it in a matter of days and it is the first book I’ve ever seen him read completely (he’s more of a magazine guy) in the almost 23 years I’ve known him.

There were many, many things that struck me in the book but I don’t want to give them all away to those of you who haven’t read it yet.  But, I will tell you one.  Little Colton, who saw heaven when he was just shy of 4 years old, saw Jesus, was held by him.  His parents wanted to know what Jesus looks like but how can a 4 year old really describe a person.  As a 46 year old, I have a hard time doing that other than stating hair color, size, and any particular markings.  So, as they would see various paintings of Jesus, they would point them out to Colton and he would always respond with “It’s not right” (or something like that).  But, when a friend of the family sent the video that I show my classes of Akiana, he saw the painting Prince of Peace and was spellbound.  After a moment, his dad asked him, “Colton, what’s wrong with this painting of Jesus?”  Colton replied, “It’s right.”

So, two totally separate events for me are related.

I passed the book along to our good friend and brother, Alan, whose own mother visited heaven and came back and said, “Heaven is for real.  I’ve seen it.  Tell everyone.  Everyone!”  That day is another whole story to tell at another time.  But I knew that Alan would be touched by the book and he was.  He passed it on to Lettia, his wife and my sister-friend, who read it in a day (she, like Tim, is not a book reader).

And now today, another client sat in my office telling me how eight months ago he saw Colton in an interview on TV, bought the book that same day, and read it that day.  It changed his faith.  It put him on a road back to God.

I don’t believe in coincidences.  I believe in God-incidences.  Is it a stretch to say God’s hand is in all this?  Not at all!  He gave Colton, Akiana, and Alan’s mother visions and a desire to tell their stories.  Their stories have inspired countless people in their faiths.  Me included. All of these seemingly unrelated events weave into a wonderful story that only God could seamlessly integrate.  I see God’s hand.